Yet what the world refused to Lewis,
Applied to George, exactly true is. 
Exactly true! invidious poet! 
’Tis fifty thousand times below it. 
  Translate me now some lines, if you can,
From Virgil, Martial, Ovid, Lucan. 
They could all power in Heaven divide,
And do no wrong on either side;
They teach you how to split a hair,
Give George and Jove an equal share.[32]
Yet why should we be laced so strait? 
I’ll give my monarch butter-weight. 
And reason good; for many a year
Jove never intermeddled here: 
Nor, though his priests be duly paid,
Did ever we desire his aid: 
We now can better do without him,
Since Woolston gave us arms to rout him.
Caetera desiderantur.

[Footnote 1:  See Young’s “Satires,” and “Life” by Johnson.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2:  The prison or house of correction to which harlots were often consigned.  See Hogarth’s “Harlot’s Progress,” and “A beautiful young Nymph,” ante, p. 201.—­W.  R. B.]

[Footnote 3:  Colley Cibber, born in 1671, died in 1757; famous as a comedian and dramatist, and immortalized by Pope as the hero of the “Dunciad”; appointed Laureate in December, 1730, in succession to Eusden, who died in September that year.  See Cibber’s “Apology for his Life”; Disraeli’s “Quarrels of Authors,” edit. 1859.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 4:  Barnaby Bernard Lintot, publisher and bookseller, noted for adorning his shop with titles in red letters.  In the Prologue to the “Satires” Pope says:  “What though my name stood rubric on the walls”; and in the “Dunciad,” book i, “Lintot’s rubric post.”  He made a handsome fortune, and died High Sheriff of Sussex in 1736, aged sixty-one.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 5:  The coffee-house most frequented by the wits and poets of that time.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 6:  See ante, p. 192, “On Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet.”—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 7:  Allusion to the large sums paid by Walpole to scribblers in support of his party.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 8: 
  “Sunt geminae Somni portae:  quarum altera fertur
  Cornea; qua veris facilis datur exitus Vmbris: 
  Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto;
  Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia Manes.” 
        VIRG., Aen., vi.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 9:  See the “South Sea Project,” ante, p. 120.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 10:  Thomas Rymer, archaeologist and critic.  The allusion is to his “Remarks on the Tragedies of the last Age,” on which see Johnson’s “Life of Dryden” and Spence’s “Anecdotes,” p. 173.  Rymer is best known by his work entitled “Foedera,” consisting of leagues, treaties, etc., made between England and other kingdoms.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 11:  John Dennis, born 1657, died 1734.  He is best remembered as “The Critic.”  See Swift’s “Thoughts on various subjects,” “Prose Works,” i, 284; Disraeli, “Calamities of Authors:  Influence of a bad Temper in Criticism”; Pope’s Works, edit.  Elwin and Courthope, passim.—­W.  E. B.]